Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2539 (starts 9/22/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/588991 

    Well, summer technically ends this week, although with global warming you never really know what to expect. Except for Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, where you can expect the coolest tunes from the late 1960s every week, including tracks from the Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hey, that almost sounds like a blues show, but not to worry; we have a set from the Monkees to make up for it.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Season Of The Witch
Source:    CD: Donovan's Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sony (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966 (stereo version, 1969)
     Season Of The Witch has proved to be one of the most popular and enduring tracks on Donovan's Sunshine Superman album. Due to a contract dispute with Pye Records, the album was not released in the UK until late 1967, and then only as an LP combining tracks from both the Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow albums. Like all tracks from both Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, Season Of The Witch was only available in a mono mix until 1969, when a new stereo mix was created from the original multi-track masters for the singer/songwriter's first greatest hits compilation. Season of the Witch has since been covered by an impressive array of artists, including Al Kooper and Stephen Stills (on the Super Session album) and Vanilla Fudge.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Pledging My Time
Source:    Austrian import CD: Blonde On Blonde 
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The second track from Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album was Pledging My Time, a blues tune that features Robbie Robertson (who had been touring with Dylan) on guitar. The song was one of three tracks recorded in four takes in Nashville on March 8th of 1966. The song was also used as the B side of the album's first single, but was faded out about two-thirds of the way through.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Try To Understand
Source:    LP: The Seeds
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    GNP Crescendo
Year:    1966
    The Seeds' first recording session of 1966 resulted in the band's third single, Try To Understand. By this point in the band's career lead vocalist Sky Saxon was no longer playing bass in the studio, although he continued to play the instrument onstage. At Saxon's request, Harvey Sharpe of the Beau-Jives, a popular Los Angeles band that occasionally appeared at Gene Norman's Crescendo Club (Norman also being the owner of the GNP Crescendo record label that the Seeds recorded for) joined the group in the studio, along with guitarist Vinnie Fanelli. The song was not able to get much airplay when released as an A side in February of 1966, and subsequently was chosen as the B side of the re-released version of Pushin' Too Hard later the same year, which ended up being the group's biggest hit. The song also appeared as the opening track of side two of the Seeds' debut LP.

Artist:     Animals
Title:     Hey Gyp
Source:     CD: Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released on US-only LP: Animalism)
Writer:     Donovan Leitch
Label:     Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year:     1966
     Shortly before the original Animals disbanded in 1966, M-G-M Records collected several songs that had yet to be issued in the US and put out an album called Animalism (not to be confused with Animalisms, a UK album from earlier that year). One of the more outstanding tracks on that album was this cover of a Donovan tune that almost seems like it was written with Eric Burdon's voice in mind.

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Desireé 
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of The Strawberry Alarm Clock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Weitz/Pitman
Label:    Sundazed/Uni
Year:    1969
    By 1969 just about everything about the Strawberry Alarm Clock was lost in a mass of confusion. For one thing it was hard to know exactly who was in the band, thanks to almost continuous personnel changes over a two year period. The topper came when the band fired their manager, who then put together a different Strawberry Alarm Clock that included several former members of the band and sent them out on tour. The members of the original band, who continued to make records like the 1969 single Desireé, successfully got a court injunction to stop the new group from using the name Strawberry Alarm Clock, but by then the damage had been done. The Clock kept on ticking for another couple of years, but in late 1971, having lost their record contract, the group decided to call it quits.
    
Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Brave New World 
Source:    LP: Homer soundtrack (originally released on LP: Brave New World)
Writer(s):    Steve Miller
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    It took the Steve Miller Band half a dozen albums (plus appearances on a couple of movie soundtracks) to achieve star status in the early 1970s. Along the way they developed a cult following that added new members with each successive album. The fourth Miller album was Brave New World, the title track of which was used in the film Homer, a 1970 film that is better remembered for its soundtrack than for the movie itself.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Hear My Train A Comin'
Source:    CD: Valleys Of Neptune
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2013
    Hear My Train A Comin' was part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience repertoire as early as 1967, when they recorded a version of the tune for the BBC's Top Gear radio program. By 1969 it had expanded from a standard three minute blues piece to a seven-minute long showcase of Hendrix's guitar pyrotechnics. On April 7, 1969 the band went to the Record Plant in New York City and recorded this version in a single take. It would be one of the last recordings by the band's original lineup, due to increasing friction over the use of studio time between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding. Four months later Hendrix, along with a loose jam band he referred to as Gypsy Sun And Rainbows, would perform the song at Woodstock.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    For Your Love
Source:    Mono CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    K-Tel (original label: Epic)
Year:    1965
    The last Yardbirds song to feature guitarist Eric Clapton, For Your Love was the group's first US hit, peaking in the #6 slot. The song did even better in the UK, peaking at #3. Following its release, Clapton left the Yardbirds, citing the band's move toward a more commercial sound and this song in particular as reasons for his departure (ironic when you consider songs like his mid-90s hit Change the World or his slowed down lounge lizard version of Layla). For Your Love was written by Graham Gouldman, who would end up as a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and later 10cc with Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    Work Song
Source:    LP: East-West
Writer(s):    Adderly/Brown
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Although technically not a rock album, the Butterfield Blues Band's East-West was nonetheless a major influence on many up and coming rock musicians that desired to transcend the boundaries of top 40 radio. Both the title track and the band's reworking of Nat Adderly's Work Song feature extended solos from all the band members, with Work Song in particular showing Butterfield's prowess on harmonica, as well as helping cement Michael Bloomfield's reputation as the nation's top electric guitarist (before the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, at any rate). Elvin Bishop's guitar work on the song is not too shabby either.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
Source:    LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Marty Balin
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1967
    Marty Balin says he came up with the title of the opening track of side two of Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow album by combining a couple of random phrases from the sports section of a newspaper. Oh, and just to save you the trouble of calculating it for yourselves, 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds works out to 216 MPH. You're welcome.

Artist:     Beacon Street Union
Title:     Speed Kills
Source:     British import CD: The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union/The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer:     Ulaky/Wright
Label:     See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year:     1967
     Boston's Beacon Street Union had an interesting mix of tunes on their debut LP. Despite the title, Speed Kills is not an anti-drug song. Rather, the song addresses the frenetic pace of life the band members had encountered since relocating to New York City shortly before recording The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union.

Artist:    George Harrison
Title:    All Things Must Pass (early demo version)
Source:    CD: Beatles Anthology 3
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Capitol/Apple
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 1996
    Although he had suggested it as a potential song for the Beatles to record during the sessions that later became the Let It Be album, it wasn't until his 26th birthday (February 25, 1969) that George Harrison recorded his first studio demo of All Things Must Pass, with only a second guitar overdubbed to the original tape. I actually like this better than the overproduced LP version of the song from the album of the same name the following year.

Artist:     Turtles
Title:     The Last Thing I Remember, The First Thing I Knew
Source:     12" 45 RPM Picture Disc: Turtles 1968 
Writer:     The Turtles
Label:     Rhino
Year:     Recorded 1968, released 1978
     In 1968 the Turtles rebelled against their record company. They did not attempt to break the contract or go on strike, though. Instead, they simply went into the studio and produced four songs that they themselves wrote and chose to record. The record company, in turn, chose not to issue any of the self-produced recordings (although one, Surfer Dan, did end up on their Battle of the Bands album a few months later). Finally, in the late 1970s a small independent label known for issuing oddball recordings by the likes of Barnes and Barnes (Fish Heads) and professional wrestler Fred Blassie (Pencil-Neck Geek) put out a 12-inch picture disc featuring the four tunes. That label also began reissuing old Turtles albums, starting it on a path that has since become the stock in trade for Rhino Records.

Artist:    Tangerine Zoo
Title:    Another Morning
Source:    CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: Tangerine Zoo)
Writer(s):    Ray Thomas
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Many of the acts signed to Bob Shad's Mainstream label are considered by rock historians to be somewhat lacking in one or another categories, such as songwriting, virtuosity or just plain commercial viability. This has resulted in the reputations of the few quality bands appearing on the label to be somewhat unfairly tarnished by association. One of those bands that really deserves a second look is the Tangerine Zoo, from Swansea, Mass., a few miles south of Boston. The band, made up of Tony Taviera (bass), Wayne Gagnon (guitar), Ron Medieros(organ), Bob Benevides (lead vocals) and Donald Smith (drums), recorded two albums for the label, both of which were released in 1968. Tangerine Zoo had actually been approached by no less than two major labels (RCA Victor and Mercury) before deciding to go with Mainstream, the only label to offer them an album contract from the start. Another Morning, from the group's second LP, Outside Looking In, shows just how well developed a sound Tangerine Zoo had. Unfortunately internal issues caused the Zoo to close down before they could record a third LP. 

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    I Want To Be Your Driver
Source:    CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: Live At The Cafe Au Go Go)
Writer(s):    Chuck Berry
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year:    1966
    When Tommy Flanders abruptly quit the Blues Project in January of 1966, the rest of the band found themselves with an album's worth of material, most of which included Flanders's lead vocals, and a record company that had already scheduled the album's release date. Their solution was to take over New York's Cafe Au Go Go for several afternoons to record a revised set of tunes in front of an invited audience. Although some Flanders tracks ended up on the album Live At The Cafe Au Go Go, others, such as the band's cover of Chuck Berry's I Want To Be Your Driver, featured other band members on lead vocals (in this case, guitarist Danny Kalb). 

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Daily Nightly
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.)
Writer(s):    Michael Nesmith
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1967
    One of the first rock songs to feature a Moog synthesizer was the Monkees' Daily Nightly from the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. Micky Dolenz, who had a reputation for nailing it on the first take but being unable to duplicate his success in subsequent attempts, was at the controls of the new technology for this recording of Michael Nesmith's most psychedelic song (he also sang lead on it). The Moog itself had been programmed by electronic music pioneer Paul Beaver especially for this recording.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Porpoise Song
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Words
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Boyce/Hart
Label:    Colgems
Year:    1967
    The Monkees made a video of the Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart song Words that shows each member in the role that they were best at as musicians: Mickey Dolenz on lead vocals, Peter Tork on guitar, Michael Nesmith on bass and Davy Jones on drums. This was not the way they were usually portrayed on their TV show, however. Neither was it the configuration on the recording itself, which had Nesmith on guitar, Tork on Hammond organ, producer Chip Douglas on bass and studio ace Eddie Hoh on drums, with Dolenz and Tork trading off on the lead vocals. The song appeared on the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD as well as being released as the B side of Pleasant Valley Sunday. Even as a B side, the song was a legitimate hit, peaking at #11 in 1967.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Something Better Beginning
Source:    LP: Kinda Kinks
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    Although there were differences between the original UK edition and US release of the 1965 LP Kinda Kinks, both albums ended with Ray Davies Something Better Beginning. The album itself was recorded and released within two weeks after the band had returned from an Asian tour. As a result, the production was a rush job and the band members were not happy with the results. Nonetheless, Kinda Kinks ended up being a top 5 album in the UK, peaking at #60 on the Billboard Top LP chart in the US.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Alley Oop
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Dallas Frazier
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1965/2011
    The Lovin' Spoonful didn't actually release their version of the old Hollywood Argyles song Alley Oop as a single in 1965. In fact, they didn't release the song at all, even though it was recorded during the same sessions that became their debut LP that year. In 2011 the people at Sundazed decided to create a "single that never was", pairing Alley Oop with the full-length version of Night Owl Blues, a song that had been included on the 1965 debut in edited form. The Spoonful version of Alley Oop has an almost garage-band feel about it, and is perhaps the best indication on vinyl of what the band actually sounded like in their early days as a local fixture on the Greenwich Village scene.

Artist:    Notes From The Underground
Title:    Let Yourself Fly
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley Years
Writer(s):    Jim Work
Label:    Big Beat 
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1995
    Prior to signing with Vanguard in late 1967, Berkeley, California's Notes From The Underground tried to follow in the footsteps of fellow Berkeleyites Country Joe And The Fish by recording and releasing a four-song EP of their own. They ended up recording seven songs in April of 1967. Among the three unused songs was Let Yourself Fly, the only song  in the Notes From The Underground catalog that was written by keyboardist Jim Work.

Artist:    Otis Redding
Title:    (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source:    LP: Historic Performances Recorded At The Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    Otis Redding pulled out all the stops for his performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Luckily, the entire performance was recorded, including his energetic cover of the Rolling Stones classic (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, which Redding had taken onto the Soul charts the previous year with his own studio version of the tune. Redding's backup band included members of the MGs and the Bar-Kays, several members of which, as well as Redding himself, would lose their lives in a tragic plane crash just a few months after their appearance at Monterey. 

Artist:    Monks
Title:    I Can't Get Over You
Source:    Mono German import CD: Black Monk Time (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Burger/Clark/Day/Johnson/Shaw
Label:    Repertoire (original label Polydor)
Year:    1966
    The Monks were formed in Germany by five American GIs stationed in Frankfurt. Right from the start, the Monks had a look and sound that was unlike anything that had come before. With military haircuts supplemented by shaved patches at the top and wearing black gowns with a hangman's noose for a necktie, the Monks spat out angry tunes centered on the dark side of human nature. Although they were enough of a curiosity to attract live audiences, their records did not sell particularly well, and for their second single, a song called I Can't Get Over You, they toned it down a touch, although if you listen closely to the vocals you can tell they weren't particularly happy about doing so.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Shifting Sands
Source:    CD: Part One
Writer(s):    Baker Knight
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Despite releasing six albums over a five-year period, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band never had a hit record. One attempt was Shifting Sands, one of two Baker Knight compositions the band released on Part One, their first LP for Reprise Records.

Artist:     Bob Seger System
Title:     Death Row
Source:     45 RPM single B side
Writer:     Bob Seger
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1968
     I like to play Bob Seger's Death Row, written from the perspective of a convicted murderer waiting to be executed, for fans of the Silver Bullet Band who think that Turn the Page is about as intense as it gets. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across this rare single at a radio station I used to work for. Even better, the station had no desire to keep the record, since the A side, the equally intense anti-war song 2+2=?, never charted. Their loss.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Fried Hockey Boogie
Source:    LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s):    Samuel L. Taylor
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1968
    The climax of every Canned Heat performance was the "boogie", a loose jam based on a repeating three-note riff that gave each band member a chance to strut their stuff as a soloist. The first of these to be released on a record was actually a studio recording. Fried Hockey Boogie was the final track on the band's second LP, appropriately titled Boogie With Canned Heat. The song was officially credited to bassist Larry Taylor.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    The Masked Marauder
Source:    CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s (which is rather ironic, considering that they were actually based in Berkeley on the other side of the bay and rarely visited the city itself, except to play gigs). Their first two releases were EPs included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened. 

Artist:    Woolies
Title:    Who Do You Love
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Elias McDaniel
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1966
    Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love had become somewhat of a rock and roll dance standard by the mid-1960s, with several bands recording the tune. Probably the most overtly psychedelic version came from East Lansing, Michigan's Woolies. The group was discovered by Dunhill Records' Lou Adler and were flown out to L.A. to record the song, which was originally considered the B side of their debut single. When some radio stations started flipping the record over to play Who Do You Love, Dunhill was slow to promote the song, and it stalled out in the lower reaches of the charts. Disillusioned by the whole experience, all but one member of the Woolies returned to Michigan, where they formed their own label and recorded a series of moderately successful regional hits.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    The Sound Of Silence
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    The Sound Of Silence was originally an acoustic piece that was included on Simon and Garfunkel's 1964 debut album, Wednesday Morning 3AM. The album went nowhere and was soon deleted from the Columbia Records catalog. Simon and Garfunkel themselves went their separate ways, with Simon moving to London and recording a solo LP, the Paul Simon Songbook, and Art Garfunkel going back to college in New York. While Simon was in the UK, something unexpected happened. Radio stations along the east coast began playing the song, getting a strong positive response from college students, particularly those on spring break in Florida. On June 15, 1965 producer Tom Wilson, who had been working with Bob Dylan on Like A Rolling Stone earlier in the day, pulled out the master tape of The Sound Of Silence and, utilizing some of the same studio musicians, added electric instruments to the existing recording. The electrified version of the song was released to local radio stations, where it garnered enough interest to get the modified recording released as a single. It turned out to be a huge hit, prompting Paul Simon to move back to the US and reunite with Art Garfunkel.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2539 (starts 9/22/25)

 https://exchange.prx.org/p/588990

    We've got a lot of stuff from vinyl sources this week, some of it a bit scratchy. But considering that there is still a lot of music out there that has never been issued on CD, sometimes ya just gotta go with what ya got.

Artist:    Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina
Title:    Your Mama Don't Dance
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Loggins/Messina
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1972
    Kenny Loggins was just 20 years old when he released the first of three singles for Snuff Garrett's Viva label in 1968. This led to a brief stint as guitarist for the "new, improved" Electric Prunes in 1969 before forming the band Gator Creek with fellow guitarist Mike Deasy, releasing one album on the Mercury label. In 1970 he met up with Jim Messina, who had become an independent record producer following his runs with Buffalo Springfield and Poco. The two of them began recording some of Loggin's tunes for a proposed Loggins solo LP that eventually turned into the first Loggins and Messina LP, officially titled Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In. The two began touring together to promote the album and soon decided to officially become a duo, releasing the album Loggins And Messina in 1972. The album included Your Mama Don't Dance, a tune that they wrote together that became their biggest hit single, going into the top 5 in early 1973.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Little Wing
Source:    CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: Axis: Bold As Love)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Although it didn't have any hit singles on it, Axis: Bold As Love, the second album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was full of memorable tunes, including one of Hendrix's most covered songs, Little Wing. The album itself is a showcase for Hendrix's rapidly developing skills, both as a songwriter and in the studio. The actual production of the album was a true collaborative effort, combining Hendrix's creativity, engineer Eddie Kramer's expertise and producer Chas Chandler's strong sense of how a record should sound, acquired through years of recording experience as a member of the Animals. 

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Preservation
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1974
    The Kinks' Preservation was a song that served as a summation of the band's 1974 concept album, Preservation-Act 1. Oddly enough, the song itself was not included on either that album or its followup, Preservation-Act 2, instead being released as a non-album single in 1974. There were two versions of the song, the longer of which is heard here. My copy is a bit on the scratchy side, but given the fact that the single failed to chart, I consider myself lucky to have a copy of it at all. 

Artist:    Monty Python's Flying Circus
Title:    First World War Noises (excerpt)
Source:    LP: Matching Tie And Handkerchief
Writer(s):    Monty Python's Flying Circus
Label:    Arista
Year:    1973
    By the 1970s listening booths had all but disappeared in the US, but could still be found in Europe and the UK. In 1973 Monty Python's Flying Circus included a bit that took place in a store with listening booths, which was probably baffling to the younger members of their US audience. The gist of the bit was that midway through whatever was being listened to, in this case something called First World War Noises, the record would get stuck playing the same groove over and over, forcing the customer to leave the booth and ask for help. Presented here is just a short segment of First World War Noises itself, featuring a rather strange conversation between a British officer and a Sergeant stuck in a foxhole together. Of course the record gets stuck/gets stuck/gets stuck/gets stuck.....
    
Artist:    Genesis
Title:    Time Table
Source:    CD: Foxtrot
Writer(s):    Tony Banks
Label:    Atlantic/Rhino (original label: Charisma)
Year:    1972
    Although most Genesis songs from the early 1970s are collaborative efforts by the entire group, Time Table is an exception. The song, which appears on the 1972 album Foxtrot, was written by keyboardist Tony Banks and presented to the rest of the group to be recorded. It has been called one of the most overlooked over the early Genesis songs and in many ways presages the direction the band's music would take later in the decade.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Long Distance Runaround/The Fish (Schindleria Praematuris)
Source:    CD: Fragile
Writer(s):    Anderson/Squire
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    The fourth Yes album, Fragile, introduced the "classic" Yes lineup of John Anderson (vocals), Bill Bruford (drums), Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass) and Rick Wakemen (keyboards), and features some of the band's best known songs. Among the most popular is Long Distance Runaround, which was also released as the B side of the hit single Roundabout. Anderson's lyrics express his disillusionment with "the craziness of religion" and intolerance of other viewpoints in general, including opposition to the war in Vietnam. On the album, the song segues directly into The Fish (Schindleria Praematuris), a mostly instrumental piece written by Squire, with a vocal refrain by Anderson repeating the name of a species of prehistoric fish toward the end of the track.

Artist:    Moody Blues
Title:    Question
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Justin Hayward
Label:    Threshold
Year:    1970
    By 1970 the Moody Blues had developed their own unique brand of orchestral rock, and had even started their own label, Threshold (inspired by their 1969 LP On The Threshold Of A Dream). Due to the complexity of their songs, however, they were having difficulty making them sound right when performed live. In an effort to remedy the problem they tried a more stripped-down approach with their 1970 single, Question, and the subsequent LP A Question Of Balance. It worked, too, as Question became their second biggest hit single in the UK, going all the way to the #2 spot. In the long run, the band realized that their best approach was to perform with a full orchestra, which they have been doing regularly since the early 1970s.
    
Artist:    The Golden Earring
Title:    Song Of A Devil's Servant
Source:    LP: Eight Miles High
Writer(s):    George Kooymans
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    Golden Earring burst upon the music scene in 1973 with their smash hit Radar Love. Well, not exactly. The actual story of Golden Earring starts in 1961 in The Hague, Netherlands, when 13-year-old George Kooymans and his 15-year-old neighbor, Rinus Gerritsen, formed a band called the Tornados. It wasn't long, however, before they discovered that there was already a band called the Tornados. It was actually a pretty easy discovery to make, since the British Tornados had a worldwide #1 hit in 1962 with an instrumental called Telstar. Not wanting to be entirely original, Kooymans and Gerritsen soon came up with a new name, this one taken from a 1961 instrumental called Golden Earrings by a British band known as the Hunters that Kooymans and company had opened for while still calling themselves the Tornados (and just to add to the confusion there was also a Dutch band calling itself the Hunters that included a 15-year-old Jan Akkerman, later to found the band Focus). The Golden Earrings cut their first single in 1965, a song called Please Go that made the top 10 on the Dutch charts. Several more hit singles followed, and by 1969 they had dropped the final 's' from their name to become The Golden Earring. That same year they released their fifth studio album, Eight Miles High, their first to be issued in the US. Released on the Atlantic label the LP included the six-minute long Song Of A Devil's Servant, but failed to make an impression with American audiences. Eight Miles High would be Golden Earring's last US appearance on a major label until 1973's Moontan album, featuring Radar Love.

Artist:    Harvey Mandel
Title:    Snake
Source:    LP: Cristo Redentor
Writer(s):    Harvey Mandel
Label:    Philips
Year:    1968
    Harvey Mandel first came to national attention as the guitarist on Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band, one of the first blues albums to be also targeted to rock listeners. One of the standout tracks on the album was Christo Redemptor, which has come to be considered Musselwhite's signature song. Not long after the album was released, Mandel moved to San Francisco, performing regularly at the Matrix club and often jamming with fellow guitarists Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia. A chance meeting with local disc jockey Abe "Voco" Kesh led to Mandel's first solo LP, released in 1968. The album, made up entirely of instrumentals like Mandel's self-penned Snake, led to Mandel being invited to replace Henry Vestine in Canned Heat the following year.
    
Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    April
Source:    LP: Deep Purple
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Lord
Label:    Tetragrammaton
Year:    1969
    The most ambitious track on the third Deep Purple album was a piece called April. The track, which runs over twelve minutes in length, is divided into three sections. The first is an instrumental featuring keyboardist Jon Lord and guitarist Richie Blackmore, the writers of the piece. This leads into an orchestral section featuring strings and woodwinds. The final section of April features the entire band, including vocalist Rod Evans, who would be asked to leave Deep Purple shortly after the album was released.

Artist:    Derek And The Dominos
Title:    Anyday
Source:    CD: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Writer(s):    Clapton/Whitlock
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    Derek And The Dominos was originally an attempt by Eric Clapton to remove himself from the solo spotlight and work in a larger group setting than he had with his previous bands, Cream and Blind Faith. Such was Clapton's stature, however, that even among talents like Jim Gordon, Carl Radle and Bobby Whitlock, Clapton was still the star. However, there was one unofficial member of the group whose own star was in ascendancy. Duane Allman, who had chosen to stick with his own group the Allman Brothers Band, nonetheless played on eleven of the fourteen tracks on Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. His slide guitar work is especially noticeable on the title track and on the song Anyday, which remains one of the most popular songs on the album.
     

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2538 (starts 9/15/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/588119

    Besides an Advanced Psych set that features a pair of tracks never played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era and a set of Beatles songs you never hear on the radio, its pretty much business as usual this week. 

Artist:     Eire Apparent
Title:     The Clown
Source:     CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Sunrise)
Writer:     Chris Stewart
Label:     BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Buddah)
Year:     1969
     Eire Apparent was a band from Northern Ireland that got the attention of Chas Chandler, former bassist for the Animals in late 1967. Chandler had been managing Jimi Hendrix since he had discovered him playing in a club in New York a year before, bringing him back to England and introducing him to Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, who along with Hendrix would become the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Despite Eire Apparent having almost no recording experience, Chandler put them on the bill as the opening act for the touring Experience. This led to Hendrix producing the band's first and only album, Sunrise, in 1968, playing on at least three tracks, including, most obviously, The Clown.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Manic Depression
Source:    CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    On February 22, 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience played what was possibly their worst gig, which culminated in Hendrix's white Stratocaster being stolen before it was fully paid for. Later that night the band made an appearance at a press reception at which Hendrix, in the words of manager/producer Chas Chandler, sounded like a manic depressive. Inspired by Chandler's observation, Hendrix wrote a song on the subject, which he taught to the band and recorded the next day. Hendrix later referred to Manic Depression as "ugly times music", calling it a "today's type of blues."

Artist:    Kevin Ayers And The Whole World
Title:    Clarence In Wonderland
Source:    British import CD: Acid Daze (originally released on LP: Shooting At The Moon)
Writer(s):    Kevin Ayers
Label:    Uncut (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1970
    According to rock journalist Nick Kent, who specialized in the British underground music scene,  "Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them." Of course everyone knows that Syd Barrett was the founder of Pink Floyd, but Kevin Ayers, despite having a longer and more productive career, is nowhere near as well known. Ayers was a founding member of the Soft Machine, the band most associated with the "Canterbury Scene" in the late 1960s, but left the group after an exhausting US tour with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, selling his bass guitar to Noel Redding. Ayers spent most of the next year composing new material that appeared on his solo debut LP, Joy Of A Toy in November of 1969. He assembled a band that he christened The Whole World to promote the album that included a young Mike Oldfield on bass and occasionally lead guitar, avant-garde composer David Bedford on keyboards and improvising saxophonist, Lol Coxhill, among others. He took The Whole World into the studio to record his next LP, Shooting At The Moon. The album included somewhat whimsical tunes such as Clarence In Wonderland, interspersed with more avant-garde pieces. Ayers would release more than a dozen more albums before his death in 2013.

Artist:    Blues Image
Title:    Leaving My Troubles Behind
Source:    LP: Blues Image
Writer:    Blues Image
Label:    Atco
Year:    1969
    Miami's Blues Image was highly regarded by critics and musicians alike. Unfortunately, they were never able to translate that acclaim into album sales, despite recording a pair of fine albums for Atco. Following the release of the band's second LP guitarist Mike Pinera left Blues Image to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly, and after one more unsuccessful album the group disbanded. One of the strongest tracks on either album is Leaving My Troubles Behind, which features lead vocals by drummer Joe Lala.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jim Morrison
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    I have to admit, when I first heard the Doors' Hello, I Love You I hated it, considering it only a half step away from the bubble gum hits like 1,2,3 Red Light and Chewy Chewy that were dominating the top 40 charts in 1968. It turns out that the song was originally recorded in 1965 as a demo by Rick And The Ravens (basically a Doors predecessor) using the title Hello, I Love You (Won't You Tell Me Your Name). The single pressing of the song is notable for being one of the first rock songs to be released as a stereo 45 RPM record. The song went to the top of the charts in the US and Canada and became the first Doors song to break into the British top 20 as well.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    We Love You
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1967
    The last Rolling Stones record to be produced by their longtime manager Andrew Loog Oldham, We Love You, released in August of 1967, was also the most elaborate and expensive single the band had ever recorded. Although some critics dismissed the song as an attempt to outdo the Beatles' All You Need Is Love, this view is inconsistent with the fact that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who wrote We Love You, were part of the background crowd appearing with the Beatles on the worldwide premier of All You Need Is Love; furthermore, John Lennon and Paul McCartney sing background vocals on We Love You, which the Stones maintain was meant as more of a sequel to the Beatles tune rather than a competitor. The recording itself opens with the sound of a jail cell door slamming shut, a reference to the recent drug bust that had earned Jagger and Richards disproportionate sentences in an attempt to "make an example" of the pair. This is followed by an ominous sounding piano riff from famed session man Nicky Hopkins that is quickly enhanced by a cacaphony of sound, including some of the creepiest sounding mellotron (played by Brian Jones) ever recorded. Of course, being a Rolling Stones record, the lyrics take a somewhat more cynical tone than the Beatles song, but against the chaotic music track those lyrics work perfectly. We Love You was a top 10 single in the UK, but only made it to the #50 spot in the US as the B side of the song Dandelion (a short section of which fades in and out at the end of We Love You). 

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    I Am A Rock
Source:    LP: Sounds Of Silence
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The success of I Am A Rock, when released as a single in 1966, showed that the first Simon And Garfunkel hit, The Sound Of Silence, was no fluke. The two songs served as bookends to a very successful LP, Sounds Of Silence, and would lead to several more hit records before the two singers went their separate ways in 1970. This was actually the second time I Am A Rock had been issued as a single. An earlier version, from the Paul Simon Songbook, had been released in 1965. Both the single and the LP were only available for a short time and only in the UK, and were deleted at Simon's request.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Universal Soldier
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Buffy Sainte-Marie
Label:    Hickory
Year:    1965
    Before Sunshine Superman became a huge hit in the US, Scottish folk singer Donovan Leitch was making a name for himself in the UK as the "British Dylan." One of his most popular early tunes was Universal Soldier, an antiwar piece that was originally released in the UK on a four-song EP. The EP charted well, but Hickory Records, which had the US rights to Donovan's records, was reluctant to release the song in a format (EP) that had long since run its course in the US and was, by 1965, mostly used by off-brand labels to crank out soundalike hits performed by anonymous studio musicians. Eventually Hickory decided to release Universal Soldier as a single, but the record failed to make the US charts.

Artist:    Lidos
Title:    Since I Last Saw You
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Highs In The Mid Sixties Vol. 18-Colorado (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nale/Fick/Silvis/Saunar
Label:    AIP (original label: Band Box)
Year:    1964
    The band known as the Lidos was formed in Aurora, Colorado by Aurora Central High School students Gary Nale (vocals, lead and rhythm guitar), Gary Flick (vocals,bass), Dwight Silvis (vocals, keyboards, lead and rhythm guitar) and Robert Sauner (drums). They recorded their only single in 1964 for Band Box Records, a label with its own recording studio. As can be heard on Since I Last Saw You, the sound quality of that studio left much to be desired. Then again, the total rawness of the song is its primary selling point.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    Boom Boom
Source:    Mono CD: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    John Lee Hooker
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1964
    One of the highlights of the Animals' first UK album was their energetic rendition of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom. The performance was so strong, in fact, that M-G-M chose to release the song as a single in early 1965. This was followed by a US-only album called The Animals On Tour that featured the tune as its opening track. Despite the title, The Animals On Tour was not a live album. Rather, it was a collection of blues and R&B cover songs, many of which were learned from records acquired by the band members at local record stores during their 1964 US tour (hence the album title). 

Artist:    Syndicate Of Sound
Title:    Little Girl
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Baskin/Gonzalez
Label:    Rhino (original labels: Hush & Bell)
Year:    1966
    San Jose California, despite being a relatively small city in the pre-silicon valley days, was home to a thriving music scene in the mid 60s that produced more than its share of hit records from 1966-68. One of the earliest and biggest of these hits was the Syndicate Of Sound hit Little Girl, which has come to be recognized as one of the top garage-rock songs of all time. Little Girl was originally released regionally in mid 1966 on the Hush label, and reissued nationally by Bell Records a couple months later. 
    
Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Matilda Mother
Source:    CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s):    Syd Barrett
Label:    Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year:    1967
    Listening to tracks like Matilda Mother, I can't help but wonder where Pink Floyd might have gone if Syd Barrett had not succumbed to mental illness following the release of the band's first LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, in 1967. Unlike the rest of the band members, Barrett had the ability to write songs that were not only adventurous, but commercially viable as singles as well. After Barrett's departure, it took the group several years to become commercially successful on their own terms (although they obviously did). We'll never know what they may have done in the intervening years were Barrett still at the helm.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    It's All The Same
Source:    LP: The Family That Plays Together/Feedback (reissue)
Writer(s):    California/Cassady
Label:    Epic (original label: Ode)
Year:    1968
    Two things that Spirit was not known for are on display on It's All The Same, from the group's second LP, The Family That Plays Together. First, the song was co-written by drummer Ed Cassady and is his only writing credit on the album. Second, it makes the point that, despite all our surface differences, we're all the same on the inside. Like many of Spirit's songs, It's All The Same grew out of a jam session at the band's Laurel Canyon home.

Artist:    Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title:    Cowgirl In The Sand
Source:    LP: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer:    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    It has been said that adverse conditions are conducive to good art. Certainly that truism applies to Neil Young's Cowgirl In The Sand, written while Young was running a 102 degree fever. Almost makes you want to get sick yourself, doesn't it?

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Rain On The Roof (instrumental version)
Source:    LP: Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful
Writer(s):    John Sebastian
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1966
    The 1966 album Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful was deliberately recorded in a variety of styles to give the impression of several different bands performing on the record. Among the hit singles from the LP was Rain On The Roof, a folky piece with a childlike quality to it. This instrumental version of the tune was included as a bonus track on the Sundazed reissue of the LP.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Glad/Freedom Rider
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: John Barleycorn Must Die)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi
Label:    Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year:    1970
    Following the breakup of Blind Faith in early 1970, Steve Winwood got to work on his first solo LP, to be called Mad Shadows. After completing a couple of tracks Winwood found that he preferred to work within the band format and invited Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi to join him on the project, which became the fourth Traffic album, John Barleycorn Must Die. Unlike earlier Traffic studio recordings, John Barleycorn Must Die contained longer, improvisational pieces incorporating jazz elements, as can be heard on the album's opening tracks, Glad (an instrumental) and Freedom Rider. The new approach worked, as John Barleycorn Must Die became Traffic's first album to go gold.

Artist:    Yachts
Title:    Suffice To Say
Source:    Stereo British import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Priestman/Campbell
Label:    Stiff
Year:    1977
    Formed in Liverpool by art students in 1977, the Yachts' first gig under that name was opening for Elvis Costello at a local club, which in turn led to a contract with Stiff Records. Their only single for Stiff was Suffice To Say,  a self-referential parody of love songs that effectively (and humourously) breaks the fourth wall. After changing labels, the Yachts released a pair of albums before a flurry of member departures led to the band dissolving in 1981.

Artist:    Strawberry Zots
Title:    Keep Me Hangin'
Source:    LP: Cars, Flowers, Telephones
Writer(s):    Mark Andrews
Label:    StreetSound
Year:    1989
    Albuquerque's Strawberry Zots were led by Mark Andrews, who either wrote or co-wrote all of the band's original material. Their only LP, Cars, Flowers, Telephones, was released locally on the StreetSound label and reissued on CD the following year by RCA records. 

Artist:    Infrared Radiation Orchestra
Title:    Call Me Tanya
Source:    EP CD: Mad Dog Sullivan (And Other Love Songs)
Writer(s):    Kim Draheim
Label:    GTG
Year:    2024
    Before releasing their latest album, Hot Rod Full Of Eyeballs, the Infrared Radiation Orchestra put out a five-song EP that included the nine-minute long Call Me Tanya. A listen to the lyrics makes it obvious just which Tanya is being referred to.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Wild Honey Pie
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year:    1968
    At least one critic ranks Wild Honey Pie as the worst song on the Beatles' White Album. No mean feat, when you consider Revolution 9 is on the same album. Clocking in at just 52 seconds the song features Paul McCartney playing all the instruments and providing all the vocals, as the other members of the band were all doing other things during the time he was recording the tune.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Love You To
Source:    British import LP: Revolver
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1966
    Following the release of Rubber Soul in December of 1965, the Beatles' George Harrison began to make a serious effort to learn to play the Sitar, studying under the master, Ravi Shankar. Along with the instrument itself, Harrison studied Eastern forms of music. His first song written in the modal form favored by Indian composers was Love You To, from the Revolver album. The recording also features Indian percussion instruments and suitably spiritual lyrics. 

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Rocky Raccoon
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: AppleApple
Year:    1968
            I had a friend in high school named Steve Head who was probably a better guitarist/vocalist than any of us realized. Part of the reason for the mystery was because he would only play one song in public: The Beatles' Rocky Raccoon, from the White Album. He nailed it, though.
        
Artist:    Them
Title:    Mystic Eyes
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Van Morrison
Label:    Parrot
Year:    1965
    The opening track of the first Them album (2nd track on the US version) was a song that started off as an extended studio jam, with vocalist Van Morrison playing harmonica and ad-libbing vocals as the band played behind him. Luckily the tape recorder was on for the whole thing and, with a little editing the track became the group's second biggest US hit, Mystic Eyes. 

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Simulated stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michalski
Label:    Priority (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1966
    San Jose, California, was home to one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the late 60s, despite its relatively  small, pre-silicon valley population. One of the most popular bands on that scene was Count Five, a group of five guys who dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and sounded like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. Fortunately for Count Five, Jeff Beck had just left the Yardbirds when Psychotic Reaction came out, leaving a hole that the boys from San Jose were more than happy to fill.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Star Collector
Source:    LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Colgems
Year:    1967
    The Monkees were one of the first bands to utilize the Moog synthesizer on a rock record. One of the two tracks that uses the device extensively is Star Collector, a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and sung by the late Davy Jones. Usually Jones was picked to sing the band's love ballads. Star Collector, on the other hand, is a wild, almost humorous look at rock groupies; the type of song that on earlier Monkees albums would have been given to Peter Tork to sing. The synthesizer in Star Collector was programmed and played by Paul Beaver (of Beaver and Krause). Tork later said that he didn't think much of Beaver's performance, saying "he played it like a flute or something" rather than exploit the unique sounds the Moog was capable of producing.

Artist:    Blue Cheer
Title:    Summertime Blues
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Vincebus Eruptum)
Writer:    Cochrane/Capehart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year:    1968
    If 1967 was the summer of love, then 1968 was the summer it all went straight to hell. Framed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, both major anti-establishment movements of the time (civil rights and anti-war) became increasing radicalized and more violent. The hippies gave way to the Yippies, LSD gave way to crystal meth, and there were riots in the streets of several US cities. Against this backdrop Blue Cheer released one of the loudest and angriest recordings ever to grace the top 40: the proto-metal arrangement of Eddie Cochrane's 1958 classic Summertime Blues. It was the perfect soundtrack of its time.

Artist:    Wildflower
Title:    Wind Dream
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love-A Pot Of Flowers (originally released in US as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Stephen Ehret
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1966
    The Wildflower was one of four bands chosen to represent Mainstream Records on the 1967 compilation album With Love-A Pot Of Flowers. Unlike the other three bands, the Wildflower was part of the emerging San Francisco underground music scene, playing the same places as Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Grateful Dead. Following an audition at Gene Estribou's loft studio in Haight-Ashbury, the Wildflower, along with Big Brother And The Holding Company, were signed by Mainstream's owner, Bob Shad, who quickly flew the band down to Los Angeles to cut a single, a song written by guitarist Stephen Ehret and poet Michael McClure called Baby Dear. The B side of that single was an Ehret composition called Wind Dream. Although the record did not sell well, the band did a tour of the East Coast, and even generated major label interest, but by the time they were able to free themselves of their Mainstream contract, the group had broken up.

Artist:    Knack
Title:    Time Waits For No One
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Chain/Kaplan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1967
    In 1979 Capitol Records signed a group from Los Angeles called the Knack, promoted them heavily and released a single called My Sharona. It was a huge hit. Twelve years earlier Capitol Records signed a group from Los Angeles called the Knack, promoted them heavily and released a single called I'm Aware, backed with Time Waits For No One. It flopped, possibly because Capitol did not make clear which side they were promoting. The US picture sleeve lists I'm Aware first and in slightly larger font, but the German release has Time Waits For No One listed first. A shame, since Time Waits For No One could have been a hit if properly promoted.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2538 (starts 9/15/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/588117

    We've got a ton of tunes this week that have never been played on the show before, including a thirteen-minute long live recording from a Welsh band making its Rockin' in the Days of Confusion debut.

Artist:    Steely Dan
Title:    Reeling In The Years
Source:    CD: Can't Buy A Thrill
Writer(s):    Becker/Fagen
Label:    MCA (original label: ABC)
Year:    1972
    My first radio gig (sort of), was volunteering at the Voice Of Holloman, a closed-circuit station that served a handful of locations on Holloman AFB, about 10 miles from Alamogordo, NM. I had been taking broadcasting courses through a community college program that was taught by Sgt. Tim Daniels, who was the NCO in charge of the base Information Office, which ran the station, as well as a free weekly newspaper that was distributed on base. After completing the classes, Tim gave me the opportunity to do a daily two-hour show on the VOH, using records that had been sent to the station by various record labels. We got excellent singles service from some labels (Warner Brothers and Capitol in particular), but virtually nothing from others, such as ABC. This was unfortunate, as one of the best songs out at the time was Steely Dan's Reeling In The Years, from their 1972 Can't Buy A Thrill album. Tim, whose previous gig was with the Armed Forces Vietnam Network, was a big rock fan, however, and went out and bought his own copy of the album, making a copy of Reeling In The Years on reel to reel tape, which we then played extensively until the song had run its course on the charts. Thus the Voice Of Holloman, with its audience consisting mostly of guys working out at the base gym, was playing the longer album version of a song that was also getting airplay on Alamogordo's daytime-only top 40 AM station, KINN, in its edited single form. It was just about the nearest the Voice Of Holloman ever got to being an underground rock station (although I did manage to sneak in some Procol Harum, Jethro Tull and Deep Purple from time to time from the aformentioned Warner Brothers singles).

Artist:    Blue Öyster Cult
Title:    Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)
Source:    LP: Tyranny And Mutation
Writer(s):    Bouchard/Pearlman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1973
    The general consensus among Blue Öyster Cult fans is that Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (subtitled Quicklime Girl) is about a serial killer prostitute with a thing for Coast Guard crewmen on shore leave. Sure, why not?

Artist:    Randy California
Title:    Day Tripper
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Kapt. Kopter And The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Sony Music (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1972
    In 1972, with his band Spirit having fallen apart (temporarily as it turned out), guitarist Randy California released his first solo LP, Kapt. Kopter And The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds, on which he also sang lead vocals. The album contained a mix of original tunes and covers, of which Day Tripper was the most recognizable. Indeed, one of the primary criticisms of the album was the fact that most of the cover songs sounded like jams on the songs' main riffs rather than actual arrangements. 

Artist:    Fusion
Title:    Somebody's Callin' My Name
Source:    LP: Border Town
Writer(s):    Luther/Gibson
Label:    Atco
Year:    1969
    Originally known as the Jazz Folk, L.A.'s Fusion recorded only one album, and Border Town, released in 1969, certainly lives up to its name. The five-man band consisted of Bill Wolff, who had played lead guitar on the second Peanut Butter Conspiracy album, former Rising Sons bassist Gary "Magic" Marker, saxophonist Harvey Lane, drummer Richard Matzkin, and multi-instrumentalist Rick Luther. Also appearing on the album as a guest musician was Marker's former bandmate Ry Cooder, whose slide guitar can be heard on several tracks. The band called itself Fusion because it combined latin jazz, funk and even country with blues-based rock to produce a unique sound, as can be heard on Somebody's Callin' My Name.

Artist:    Martin Mull
Title:    Bun And Run #3 (Happy Cows)
Source:    45 RPM single B side (promo)
Writer(s):    Martin Mull
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1979
    You'd think that growing up in Cleveland would automatically predispose one to become a comedian, but Martin Mull actually broke into show business as a songwriter. Maybe it was because his family moved to Connecticut when he was 15, but that doesn't explain how his first song to hit any chart was A Girl Named Johnny Cash, which landed on the country charts as a single by Jane Morgan in 1970. He soon began a career as a solo artist, performing onstage sitting on a sofa purchased at a thrift store, with similar furniture decorating the stage. His songs were just as off-the-wall as his stage persona, releasing tunes like Dueling Tubas and Santafly in the early 1970s. By the end of the decade Mull had established himself as a comedic actor, first in the series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and then as host of Fernwood 2Night, a late-night talk show set in Mary Hartman's home town. One of the notable regulars on Fernwood 2Night was bandleader Happy Kyne, played by the sad-faced Frank DeVol, himself a noted bandleader and arranger whose career dated back to the 1940s. A running gag on the show was references to Happy's fast-food restaurant, Bun And Run. Mull's last album, Near Perfect / Perfect, featured two radio style commercials for Bun And Run (subtitled #1 and #3), both of which appeared as the B side of his final single, Bernie Don't Disco. In 1979 Mull quit recording to concentrate on his acting career. Probably his best known role was Roseanne Conner's gay boss Leon Carp, which he played on a weekly basis from 1991 to 1997. He was also the last celebrity to occupy the center square on the long-running game show Hollywood Squares in the early 2000s. Mull continued his acting career well into his 70s, finally retiring around 2018. Martin Mull died on June 27, 2024 at age 80.

Artist:    Kak
Title:    Trieulogy
Source:    British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released in US on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Yoder/Grelecki
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    The story of Kak is one of the strangest in rock history. Guitarists Gary Yoder and Dehner Patton had both been members of the Oxford Circle, the legendary East (San Francisco) Bay area band that broke up in early summer of 1967. Not long the breakup Yoder was approached by a guy named Gary Grelecki, who introduced himself as a fan of the band and offered to get Yoder a deal with Columbia, then the second largest record label in the country. Yoder figured that he didn't have anything to lose by saying yes; sure enough, two months later he got a call from Grelecki saying the contract was a done deal. It turned out that Grelicki's father was with the CIA and had been using Columbia as a front for agency activities in East Asia, and actually had legitimate contacts at the label. Yoder got into contact with Dehner, who had been playing in a band called Cherry Jam since the Oxford breakup, performing original material in the Davis area. One of the other members of Cherry Jam was percussionist/harpsichordist Chris Lockheed, who had previously played in a band called the Majestics. The lineup was completed with the addition of bassist Joe-Dave Damrill, who had been playing with another Davis band called Group B. The new band, calling itself Kak, was signed to Columbia's Epic subsidiary, releasing their only LP in 1969. Although neither the band (which played fewer than a dozen gigs in its entire existence) or the album was a commercial success at the time, Kak gained a cult following that exists to this day. The most ambitious track on the album, Trieulogy, is made up of three originally unrelated pieces, Golgotha, Mirage and Rain, that Yoder later said "blended well together", adding that "it's a logical pattern, lyrically and musically." The third part of Trieulogy, Rain, was also released as a single in 1969.
    
Artist:    Fantasy
Title:    Stoned Cowboy
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Robbins/DeMeo/Kimple/Russo 
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1970
    Fantasy was formed in Miami in 1967 by a group of teenagers that included Billy Robbins (vocals), Bob Robbins (bass), Jim DeMeo (guitar), Mario Russo (keyboards) and Greg Kimple (drums). The group slowly built up a following and eventually became the house band at Thee Image, the club managed by another, better known band, Blues Image. Fantasy held that gig for several months until front man Billy Robbins, who was a major reason for the group's popularity, went missing, and was found shot to death a month later. After the singer's death, the group began a search for a new vocalist, eventually settling on 16-year-old Lydia Janene Miller. Not long after Miller joined the band, they signed with Liberty Records, releasing one album in 1970. All of the band members contributed to the songwriting chores on the self-titled LP, with all but Miller credited on the instrumental Stoned Cowboy. Not long after the album's release, Miller left the group for a solo career, while the rest of the band carried on under the name Year One for awhile. 
    
Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Highway Star
Source:    CD: The Very Best Of Deep Purple (originally released on LP: Machine Head)
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Archives/Rhino
Year:    1972
    Deep Purple's most successful album was Machine Head, which hit #7 on the Billboard album charts in 1972 and went all the way to the top in several countries, including the UK. The LP starts off with Highway Star, a song that was written on the band's tour bus as a demonstration of how the band created new material. It was first performed the same day it was written. The song is a hard rocker that features extended solos from both guitarist Richie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord. Both solos were inspired by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The song became a concert staple and was often used as the show opener throughout the band's existence.

Artist:    Man
Title:    Many Are Called, But Few Get Up
Source:    British import LP: Maximum Darkness
Writer(s):    Ace/John/Jones/Leonard/Williams
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1975
    Although not as common as it was in the 1960s, there were a few bands that were successful enough in the United Kingdom to stay together and perform regularly, but could not make even the tiniest of dents in the US charts. One of best of these was the Welsh band called Man. Formed in 1968, Man released their debut LP, Revolution, the following year in both the UK and US. Their next five albums, however, were not released in North America at all. Although their next three LPs were released in the US, their 1975 live album, Maximum Darkness, was not, despite the presence of guest guitarist John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service fame. Although their were some problems with Cipollina's guitar tuning, most of the tracks on the album, including  the thirteen and a half minute long Many Are Called, But Few Get Up, feature Cipollina's playing prominently.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Saviour Machine
Source:    CD: The Man Who Sold The World
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1970
    David Bowie's third album, The Man Who Sold The World, was the first one in which his band played a major role in the development of the songs themselves. Indeed, producer/bassist Tony Visconti later said  "the songs were written by all four of us. We'd jam in a basement, and Bowie would just say whether he liked them or not." According to Bowie's biographer, Peter Doggett, "The band (sometimes with Bowie contributing guitar, sometimes not) would record an instrumental track, which might or might not be based upon an original Bowie idea. Then, at the last possible moment, Bowie would reluctantly uncurl himself from the sofa on which he was lounging with his wife, and dash off a set of lyrics." Bowie himself, however, later said that he was indeed the sole songwriter on the album, as evidenced by the chord changes in the songs themselves. As Bowie put it, "No one writes chord changes like that". Regardless of who actually wrote what, there is no question that The Man Who Sold The World rocked out harder than anything else Bowie had done up to that point (and perhaps never would again), and songs like Saviour Machine, about the pitfalls of turning to a higher power (in this case a omnipotent computer) for solutions to problems, are on a par with what Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were doing around the same time.
    
Artist:     Procol Harum
Title:     Conquistador
Source:     LP: Procol Harum Live
Writer:     Brooker/Reid
Label:    A&M
Year:     1972
     Procol Harum was formed in 1966 in Southend-on-sea, Essex, England. One of the songs on their 1967 debut album was Conquistador. Five years later the live version of the song, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra (and a notably different band lineup), was released as a single, becoming the second-biggest hit for the group (after A Whiter Shade Of Pale).

    
 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2537 (starts 9/8/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/587313

    This week we have an Advanced Psych set featuring tracks from all three decades of the 21st century. To balance it out, we also have the B side of the record that started the whole Pacific Northwest scene back in 1959. We also have a lot of tunes from 1967 this time around, and when you least expect it, a Rolling Stones set. It all starts with a long set of tunes from 1966.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Let's Get Together
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti)
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    Although Dino Valenti recorded a demo version of his song Let's Get Together in 1964, it wasn't until two years later that the song made its first appearance on vinyl as a track on Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. The Airplane version of the song is unique in that the lead vocals alternate between Paul Kantner, Signe Anderson and Marty Balin, with each one taking a verse and all of them singing on the chorus.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission)
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Paul Simon's sense of humor is on full display on A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission). The song first appeared, with slightly different lyrics on Simon's 1965 LP The Paul Simon Songbook, which was released only in the UK after Simon and Garfunkel had split following the disappointing sales of their first Columbia LP, Wednesday Morning 3AM. When the duo got back together following the surprise success of an electrified version of The Sound Of Silence, they re-recorded A Simple Desultory Philippic, including it on their third Columbia LP, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The song is a deliberate parody/tribute to Bob Dylan, written in a style similar to It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and is full of sly references to various well-known personages of the time as well as lesser-known acquaintances of Simon himself. 

Artist:     Love
Title:     Softly To Me
Source:     Australian import CD: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer:     Bryan MacLean
Label:     Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year:     1966
     Before the signing of Love in 1966, Elektra was a folk and ethnic music label whose closest thing to a rock band was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was at that time very much into creating as authentic Chicago blues sound as possible for a band of mostly white boys from New York. Love, on the other hand, was a bona-fide rock band that was packing the clubs on the Sunset Strip nightly. To underscore the significance of the signing, Elektra started a whole new numbering series for Love's debut album. Bryan McLean's role as a songwriter in Love was similar to George Harrison's as a Beatle. He didn't have many songs on any particular album, but those songs were often among the best tracks on the album. The first of these was Softly To Me from the band's debut LP.  

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    You're A Better Man Than I
Source:    Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released in US on LP: Having A Rave Up With The Yardbirds)
Writer(s):    Mike & Brian Hugg
Label:    Raven (original label: Epic)
Year:    1965
    Perhaps more than any other British Invasion band, the Yardbirds' US and UK catalogs varied considerably. This is because the band only released a pair of LPs in the UK, one of which was a live album, with the bulk of their studio output appearing on 45 RPM singles and EPs. In the US, on the other hand, the group released four (mostly) studio LPs, compiled from the various UK releases. One song, You're A Better Man Than I, actually came out on a US album four months before it was issued as a single B side in February of 1966 in the UK. 

Artist:    Eric And The Chessmen
Title:    You Don't Want My Loving
Source:    Mono German import LP: Sixties Rebellion Vol. 5-The Cave (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Eric Thorngren
Label:    Way Back (original label: Kama)
Year:    1966
    Utica, New York was home base for Eric And The Chessmen. Formed sometime around late 1964-early 1965, the band went through several personnel changes before recording their only single in 1966, a tune written by Eric Thorngren, the only remaining member of the original group.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    See See Rider
Source:    CD: Retrospective (originally released on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s):    Ma Rainey
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1966
    One of the last singles released by the original incarnation of the Animals (and the first to use the name Eric Burdon And The Animals on the label), See See Rider traces its roots back to the 1920s, when it was first recorded by Ma Rainey. The Animals version is considerably faster than most other recordings of the song, and includes a signature opening rift by organist Dave Rowberry (who had replaced founder Alan Price prior to the recording of the Animalization album that the song first appeared on) that is unique to the Animals' take on the tune. 

Artist:     Troggs
Title:     Wild Thing
Source:     Simulated stere LP: History Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Chip Taylor
Label:     Sire (original label: Fontana)
Year:     1966
    I have a DVD copy of a music video (although back then they were called promotional films) for the Troggs' Wild Thing in which the members of the band are walking through what looks like a train station while being mobbed by girls at every turn. Every time I watch it I imagine singer Reg Presley saying "giggity-giggity" as he bobs his head. 

Artist:    Mystery Trend
Title:    Johnny Was A Good Boy
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nagle/Cuff
Label:    Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year:    1967
    The Mystery Trend was a bit of an anomaly. Contemporaries of bands such as the Great! Society and the Charlatans, the Trend always stood apart from the rest of the crowd, playing to an audience that was both a bit more affluent and a bit more "adult" (they were reportedly the house band at a Sausalito strip club). Although they played in the city itself as early as 1965, they did not release their first record until early 1967. The song, Johnny Was A Good Boy, tells the story of a seemingly normal middle-class kid who turns out to be a monster (without actually specifying what he did), surprising friends, family and neighbors. Despite being an excellent tune, the song's lyrics were way too dark for top 40 radio in 1967, and the record sank like a stone.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/John Kahn/Skip Prokoff
Title:    That's All Right
Source:    Mono German import LP: The Blues (originally released on LP: The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield And Al Kooper)
Writer(s):    Arthur Crudup
Label:    CBS (original US label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Quickly following up on the success of the Super Session album, Al Kooper organized a live concert at the Fillmore West in late September that resulted in a double-LP called The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield And Al Kooper that was released at the end of the year. The album is notable for including the first recorded lead vocals by guitarist Mike Bloomfield on the Arthur Crudup standard That's All Right.

Artist:     Pink Floyd
Title:     Fearless
Source:     CD: Meddle
Writer(s):    Waters/Gilmour/Rodgers/Hammerstein
Label:    Pink Floyd (original label: Harvest)
Year: 1971
     If you were to ask several Americans in the sixties to name a psychedelic band you probably would receive several answers. If you asked several Englishmen during the same era you likely would have gotten the same answer from all of them: Pink Floyd. By 1971 the band was well on the way to establishing the sound that would define them throughout the decade with the album Meddle. The experimental nature of the band is on display in the song Fearless, which incorporates field recordings of a crowd of soccer fans singing You'll Never Walk Alone disappearing into a mass of reverberation at the end of the song.

Artist:     Guess Who
Title:     American Woman
Source:     Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer:     Bachman/Cummings/Peterson/Kale
Label:     BMG/RCA
Year:     1970
     From 1968-1970 I was living on Ramstein Air Base, which was and is a huge base in Germany with enough Canadian personnel stationed there to justify their own on-base school. For much of the time I lived there I found myself hanging out with a bunch of Canadian kids and I gotta tell you, they absolutely loved everything by the Guess Who, who were, after all, the most successful Canadian band in history. In particular, they all loved the band's most political (and controversial) hit, the 1970 tune American Woman. I rather liked it myself, and immediately went out and bought a copy of the album, one of the first to be pressed on RCA's Dynaflex vinyl. Luckily, the album is now available on CD, which sounds much better than Dynaflex ever did. 
     
Artist:    Santana
Title:    Treat
Source:    CD: Santana
Writer(s):    Santana (band)
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1969
    Guitarist Carlos Santana's original band was known to the San Francisco area as a jam band with a decidedly Latino flavor. Promoter Bill Graham convinced the band to write more structured material for their first LP, which was released in 1969. Although not an instant success, the album, buoyed by the group's appearance at Woodstock, eventually reached the # 4 spot on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Treat, a fairly representative example of the group's early style, is indeed structured, yet maintains much of the band's free-flowing energy through several style and tempo changes.

Artist:     First Edition
Title:     Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Mickey Newbury
Label:     Reprise
Year:     1967
     Kenny Rogers has, on more than one occassion, tried to put as much distance between himself and the 1968 First Edition hit Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) as possible. I feel it's my duty to remind everyone that he was the lead vocalist on the recording, and that this song was the one that launched his career. So there.

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    I'll Give You A Stone If You Throw It (Changing Tymes)
Source:    LP: Janis Ian
Writer:    Janis Ian
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year:    1967
    Janis Ian got her first poem published in a national magazine at age 12. Not content with mere literary pursuits, the talented Ms. Ian turned to music. After being turned down by several major labels, Ian finally got a contract with the tiny New Sounds label and scored her first major hit with Society's Child, a song about interracial dating that was banned on several stations in the southern US. This led to her self-titled debut album at age 15, and a contract with M-G-M subsidiary Verve Folkways. I'll Give You A Stone If You Throw It (Changing Tymes) is taken from that first LP. 

Artist:    Nice
Title:    Tantalising Maggie
Source:    CD: The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack
Writer(s):    Jackson/Emerson
Label:    Fuel 2000 (original label: Immediate)
Year:    1967
    The Nice, the first band to fuse rock, jazz and classical music, creating a totally new genre in the process, had rather unique origins. In 1966 Ike and Tina Turner did a tour of England, with their backup vocal group, the Ikettes, in tow. One of the Ikettes, P.P. Arnold, made such a strong impression on both Mick Jagger and his manager/producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, that they convinced her to stay in London and embark on a solo career. Starting in April of 1967, Oldham, who was in the process of setting up his own record label, set about putting together a band to back her up. Oldham's first recruit was bassist Lee Jackson of the local R&B group Gary Farr and the T-Bones. Jackson soon brought in former fellow T-Bone Keith Emerson, who was already getting a reputation as the London club circuit's hottest Hammond organ player. The two of them soon recruited guitarist Davy O'List and drummer Brian Davison to complete the new band, which Oldham had already decided would be called the Nice. To save money, Oldham, instead of hiring an opening act, let the Nice do a short warmup set before being joined by Arnold onstage. Since Arnold herself performed a fairly standard mix of R&B and soul songs, the Nice were encouraged to create something different for their own set. That "something different" ended up being a mix of jazz, classical and psychedelic rock that had never been heard before. It wasn't long before the Nice, with their new "progressive rock" sound, became a bigger attraction than Arnold herself, and by the end of the year the Nice had signed with Oldham's new label, Immediate Records. In December of 1967 The Thoughts Of Everlist Davjack (the title being an amalgamation of the members' last names) was released. Early releases of the album gave shared songwriting credits to the entire band. The CD reissue of The Thoughts Of Everlist Davjack, however, is more specific, with Emerson and Jackson sharing writing credit on tracks like Tantalising Maggie.

Artist:    Wailers
Title:    Road-Runner
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Dangel/Greek
Label:    Golden Crest
Year:    1959
    Golden Crest was not a rock label, yet in 1959 they released what has been called the very first American garage-rock record: Tall Cool One by the Tacoma, Washington band the Wailers (sometimes known as the Fabulous Wailers to distinguish them from Bob Marley's band). The B side of that record, Road-Runner, was an even better example of garage rock. The record was recorded in New York, but the band chose to return to Tacoma following it's release. This prompted Golden Crest to cancel the band's contract, which turned out to be a plus for the band when, after a couple of personnel changes, three of the band members formed their own label, Etiquette Records, which added the Sonics to their roster in 1964 and is still in existence today (unlike Golden Crest, which folded in 1984).

Artist:    Mommyheads
Title:    Genius Killer
Source:    CD: Genius Killer
Writer(s):    Adam Cohen
Label:    Mommyhead Music
Year:    2022
    The Mommyheads are one of those rare bands that were able to recover from being totally screwed over by a major record company, although the process took several years. Formed around 1987 in New York, they already had several releases on independent labels by the time they signed with Geffen and recorded the album called The Mommyheads in 1997. Before the album was even released, however, the band was dropped from the label due to a company-wide shakeup, and within a few months had disbanded altogether. Nearly ten years later, following a reunion concert, the Mommyheads once again became a working band, re-releasing some of their earlier material over the next few years. In 2011 they released Delicate Friction, their first album of all-new material since the 1990s. Since then they have been releasing albums on a somewhat steady basis, including the 2020 re-release of their 1997 major label debut album. Their most recent release is Genius Killer, which came out on September, 20, 2022. 

Artist:    Sand Pebbles
Title:    Bees Around The Honey
Source:    CD: A Thousand Wild Flowers (originally released in Australia on CD: Ceduna)
Writer(s):    Sand Pebbles
Label:    Sensory Projects
Year:    2008
    Neighbours is the longest-running drama series on Australian television, having aired its first episode in March of 1985. It is also the unlikely origin point for Sand Pebbles, a band formed in 2001 by three Neighbours screenwriters. Those three founding members, bassist Christopher Hollow, guitarist Ben Michael and drummer Piet Collins were soon joined by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Tanner. The band's fourth album, Ceduna, released in 2008, also featured guitarist/vocalist Tor Larsen. The following years the Sand Pebbles released A Thousand Wild Flowers, a compilation album made up of tracks from their previous releases such as Bees Around The Honey, as their first CD geared toward the US market.

Artist:    Sugar Candy Mountain
Title:    666
Source:    LP: 666
Writer(s):    Reiter/Halsey
Label:    People In A Position To Know
Year:    2016
    It's easy to read something into both the band name and album title of the 2016 release 666 by Sugar Candy Mountain. It's better, however, to not do any of that and instead simply listen to any of the album's 10 tracks for what they are: good music. Sugar Candy Mountain was officially formed on 2011 by guitarist/vocalist Ash Reiter and multi-instrumentalist Will Halsey, natives of Oakland, California who relocated to Joshua Tree not long after the band was formed. They are joined on the album's title track by guitarist Bryant Denison and keyboardist Jason Quever (who also mixed the album). 

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source:    Simulated Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!)
Writer(s):    Pete Seeger
Label:    Priority (origina label: Columbia)
Year:    1965
     After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the band turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song. The song was never mixed in true stereo, forcing the band's record label to use a simulated stereo mix on stereo copies of the LP. Once monoraul albums were phased out in the late 1960s, this "fake" stereo version remained the only one available for many years, appearing on various compilations before a mid-1990s remaster of the Turn! Turn! Turn! album used the original mono mix. 

Artist:    The Raik's Progress
Title:    I'm Going To Change The World
Source:    Mono LP: Sewer Rat Love Chant
Writer(s):    Eric Burdon
Label:    Sundazed
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2003
    "A bunch of 17-year-old quasi-intellectual proto-punks" was how Steve Krikorian, later to be known as Tonio K, described his first band. Krikorian, along with friends Alan Shapazian, Steve Olson, Nick van Maarth, and Duane Scott, formed The Raik's Progress in 1966 in Fresno, California. By the end of the year they had already cut a single for a major label (Liberty) and would soon find themselves opening for Buffalo Springfield at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium. The Raik's Progress was best known for their stage show, which included sitting down and playing a game of poker between songs and other strange antics. Their music was equally eccentric, in that it combined influences from the more blues oriented British Invasion bands like the Animals and Them with an avant-garde sensibility more in line with what Frank Zappa's Mothers were doing at the time. Although they only released one single, the band did manage to record an album's worth of material before disbanding. Those tunes, including a cover of an obscure Animals B side called I'm Going To Change The World, were finally released on an LP called Sewer Rat Love Chant in 2003.

Artist:    Cherry Slush
Title:    I Cannot Stop You
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Dick Wagner
Label:    Elektra (original labels: Coconut Grove/USA)
Year:    1967
    I Cannot Stop You, released by the Cherry Slush in 1967, has the distinction of being one of the few garage-rock singles to show up on all three of the US charts: Billboard, Cashbox and Record World. Not that it charted particularly high on all of them (its highest position was #35 on the Cashbox chart), but it was successful enough to keep the band going for a couple more years. The group was originally formed in late 1964 as the Wayfarers by a group of eigth-graders at Saginaw's Arthur Hill High School. As one of the first garage bands to jump on the folk-rock bandwagon they changed their name to the Bells Of Rhymny in 1966. That year, the band recorded a few demos that they later played for Dick Wagner, a popular local guitarist who fronted his own band, the Bossmen. Wagner liked what he heard and agreed to produce their first single, a song he wrote himself called The Wicked Old Witch. The song was released on the local Dicto label. The band recorded Wagner's I Cannot Stop You as a followup single, but personnel changes and a search for a record deal delayed the song's release until late in the year, by which time the band had changed its name to the Cherry Slush. Once the single had been released, on the local Coconut Grove label, it quickly gained popularity on local top 40 radio, and the band was close to signing with Columbia Records when they found out their contract with Coconut Grove had been sold to the Chicago based USA label, which reissued the song nationally in early 1968. Unfortunately, USA itself went bankrupt just as the band was releasing their next single, dashing their hopes of breaking out nationally. After releasing one more single (as The Slush) on yet another small local label (Chivalry) the group decided to call it quits in 1969.

Artist:    H.P. Lovecraft
Title:    Mobius Trip
Source:    CD: Two Classic Albums from H. P. Lovecraft (originally released on LP: H.P. Lovecraft II)
Writer(s):    George Edwards
Label:    Collector's Choice (original label: Philips)
Year:    1968
    The second album by H.P. Lovecraft (the band, not the author) is sometimes referred to as the ultimate acid rock album. In fact, it has been rumoured to be the first album made entirely under the influence of LSD (although the same has been said of the 1967 Jefferson Airplane LP After Bathing At Baxter's and both albums by the 13th Floor Elevators as well). This may in part because the band had relocated from their native Chicago to Marin County, California, where they shared billing with established Bay Area bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane. The album also featured more original material than the band's debut LP, including the lounge-lizard-on-acid sounding Mobius Trip.

Artist:    Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones)
Title:    In Another Land
Source:    LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Bill Wyman
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    During recording sessions for the late 1967 Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request bassist Bill Wyman made a forty-five minute drive to the studio one evening only to find out that the session had been cancelled. The band's manager and producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, managed to salvage the moment by asking Wyman if he had any song ideas he'd like to work on while he was there. As it turned out, Wyman had just come up with a song called In Another Land, about waking up from a dream only to discover you are actually still dreaming. Utilizing the talents of various people on hand, including Steve Marriott, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Nicky Hopkins, Wyman recorded a rough demo of his new tune. When Mick Jagger and Keith Richards heard the song they liked it so much that they added background vocals and insisted the track be used on the album and released as a single by Bill Wyman (with another track from the LP on the B side credited to the entire band). They even went so far as to give Wyman solo artist credit on the label of the LP itself (the label reads: Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones*, with the next line reading *by Bill Wyman), with an asterisk preceeding the song title in the track listing. Wyman reportedly hated the sound of his own voice on the song, and insisted that a tremelo effect be added to it in the final mix. The snoring at the end of the track is Wyman himself, as captured in the studio by Mick and Keith.
 
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Lady Jane
Source:    CD: Flowers (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (London)
Year:    1966
    One of the best 60s Rolling Stones albums is 1966's Aftermath, which included such classics as Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl and the eleven-minute Goin' Home. Both the US and UK versions of the LP included the song Lady Jane, which was also released as the B side to Mother's Little Helper (which had been left off the US version of Aftermath to make room for Paint It, Black). The policy at the time was for B sides that got a significant amount of airplay to be rated separately from the A side of the single, and Lady Jane managed to climb to the # 24 spot on the Hot 100 (Mother's Little Helper peaked at # 8). Both tunes were also included on the 1967 LP Flowers.

Artist:     Rolling Stones
Title:     Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
Source:     LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer:     Jagger/Richards
Label:     London
Year:     1967
     Following the critical and commercial success of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Stones responded with their most psychedelic album ever, Their Satanic Majesties Request, with its own cover parodying the Sgt. Pepper cover. As an added touch, the Stones album featured cover art done on special holographic paper (the same material used for holo rings purchased from bubble gum machines) to simulate a 3D effect. The first side wrapped up with the nearly eight-minute Sing This All Together (See What Happens), a sort of psychedelic jam track featuring an unusual array of instruments and effects. 

Artist:    Kinks (Dave Davies)
Title:    Death Of A Clown
Source:    LP: Something Else
Writer(s):    Ray and Dave Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    The first Kinks album to be recorded and mixed in stereo, Something Else was virtually ignored in the US, where the band had been banned from performing since 1964. In the UK, however, the album was another in a series of successes for the band. One of the songs from that album, Death Of A Clown, featured lead guitarist and co-writer Dave Davies on lead vocals. Even though the entire band played on the track, the song was released as Dave Davies solo debut single, hitting the UK top 10 in the fall of 1967. 

Artist:    Fallen Angels
Title:    Mother's Homesick Too
Source:    British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released in US on LP: Fallen Angels)
Writer(s):    Decker/Meier
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year:    1967
    Washington, DC, was home to the Fallen Angels, an off-the-wall band that evolved from another DC band, the Mad Hatters, in 1965. Descrbing themselves as "ravenous mimics with a penchant for political satire", the Angels began their recording career with an indie single and a pair of 45s for the Laurie label before signing with the then-powerful Roulette label in 1967. Their self-titled debut LP, including the song Mother's Homesick Too, hit the racks in 1967. After their second album, It's A Long Way Down, failed to make a commercial impression, the group disbanded in 1969, only to reunite for a third album, Rain Of Fire, nearly 30 years later.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less)
Source:    Mono LP: The Electric Prunes
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Reprise)
Year:    1967
    For a follow-up to the hit single I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), producer Dave Hassinger chose another Annette Tucker song (co-written by Jill Jones) called Get Me To The World On Time. This was probably the best choice from the album tracks available, but Hassinger may have made a mistake by choosing Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less) as the B side. That song, written by the same Tucker/Mantz team that wrote I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) could quite possibly been a hit single in its own right if it had been issued as an A side. I guess we'll never know for sure. 

Artist:    Crosby, Stills And Nash
Title:    Helplessly Hoping
Source:    LP: Crosby, Stills and Nash
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    By 1969 there was a significant portion of the record-buying public that was more interested in buying albums than in picking up the latest hit single. This in turn was leading to the emergence of album-oriented FM radio stations as a player in the music industry. Crosby, Stills and Nash took full advantage of this trend. Although they did release a pair of singles from the debut LP (Marrakesh Express and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes), it was their album tracks like Helplessly Hoping that got major airplay on FM radio and helped usher in the age of the singer/songwriter, making the trio superstars in the process.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2537 (starts 9/8/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/587311

    Once again we have a show that starts off nice and organized but ends up a chaotic mess. But a beautiful mess it is, thanks to people like Harvey Mandel, Blues Image and the Allman Brothers Band, among others. How many others? Well, we have a dozen artists with a dozen tracks, nearly half of which have never been played on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion before. We start, however, with an old favorite.

Artist:     Traffic
Title:     Feelin' Alright
Source:     CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer:     Dave Mason
Label:     Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:     1968
     Dave Mason left Traffic after the band's first album, Mr. Fantasy, but returned in time to contribute several songs to the band's eponymous second LP. Among those was the classic Feelin' Alright, which would become one of the most covered songs in rock history.

Artist:    Climax Blues Band
Title:    Hey Baby, Everything's Gonna Be Alright, Yeh Yeh Yeh
Source:    German import CD: 25 Years (originally released on LP: Plays On)
Writer(s):    Climax Blues Band
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: Sire)
Year:    1969
    Before devolving into a generic 80s pop-rock band, the Climax Blues Band was exactly what their name implied, as can be heard on Hey Baby, Everything's Gonna Be Alright, Yeh Yeh Yeh from their second LP, Play On. 

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix Experience (MkII)
Title:     Freedom
Source:     CD: First Rays of the New Rising Sun (originally released on LP: Rainbow Bridge)
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     MCA/Experience Hendrix (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1970
     Jimi Hendrix was working on a new double album when he died, but nobody else seemed to be sure where he was going with it. As there were several tracks that were unfinished at the time, Reprise Records gathered what they could and put them together on an album called The Cry Of Love. Freedom, a nearly finished piece (the unfinished part being a short "placesetter" guitar solo that Hendrix never got around to replacing with a final take), is the opening track from the album. Soon after that, a new Hendrix concert film called Rainbow Bridge was released along with a soundtrack album containing most of the remaining tracks from the intended double album. Finally, under the auspices of the Hendrix family in 1997, MCA (with the help of original engineer Eddie Kramer and drummer Mitch Mitchell) pieced together what was essentially an educated guess about what would have been that album and released it under the name First Rays of the New Rising Sun. 
    
Artist:    Carole King
Title:    Beautiful
Source:    LP: Tapestry
Writer(s):    King/Stern
Label:    Ode/Epic
Year:    1971
    One of the most successful songwriting teams in pop music history was the husband-and-wife combination of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Starting with the 1960 Shirelles hit Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, the pair turned out a string of best-sellers, including The Loco-Motion, Up On The Roof, Pleasant Valley Sunday and many other hit singles. King also had a recording career in the early 1960s, with her biggest hit being It Might as Well Rain Until September, a Goffin/King composition she recorded in 1962. By the middle of the decade, however, King had left her singing career, instead concentrating on motherhood and songwriting. In 1968, after she and Goffin divorced, King once again began performing. Her big breakthrough came in 1971 with the album Tapestry and it's lead single, It's Too Late, which went to the top of the charts in the US and Canada and made the top 10 in the UK and Australia. The album produced several more hits, including I Feel The Earth Move, So Far Away and Smackwater Jack, winning several awards and going on to become one of the top selling albums in history. For all that, there are still songs on Tapestry that have been overlooked for years, including Beautiful, a song that King later said came to her spontaneously while riding the subway in New York.

Artist:    Moody Blues
Title:    For My Lady
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Ray Thomas
Label:    Threshold
Year:    1972
    The classic Moody Blues lineup of Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Ray Thomas,Graeme Edge and Mike Pinder released a total of seven albums over a six year period spanning the years 1967-1972, and every one of those albums included songwriting credits for all five band members, both as individuals and collaborators. Ray Thomas, who played various wind instruments for the group, contributed the song For My Lady to the 1972 LP Seventh Sojourn. The song, which was written not long after his divorce, expresses a desire for a "gentle lady", a term that he apparently did not apply to his former wife.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    The Rain Song
Source:    CD: Houses Of The Holy
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1973
    One of the most popular songs in the Led Zeppelin catalog, The Rain Song was reportedly written in response to a comment made by George Harrison of the Beatles to drummer John Bonham, that Led Zeppelin never did any ballads. When guitarist Jimmy Page heard about it he went to work on the piece, which he initially called Slush for its simulated orchestral arrangements on guitar. He presented the finished melody to Robert Plant, who then wrote lyrics and came up with the final title for the tune. John-Paul Jones added mellotron tracks, adding to the orchestral feel of the seven and a half minute long piece.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Wind Up
Source:    CD: Aqualung
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1971
    The first three Jethro Tull albums saw the group transition from a blues base to a more eclectic sound, defined by the songwriting of vocalist/flautist/acoustic guitarist Ian Anderson. The real breakthrough for the band, however, was their fourth LP, Aqualung, which for a while was the most-played album on progressive rock radio in the US. The second side of the album is a scathing condemnation of the hypocrisy of modern organized religion. The final track, Wind Up, takes its title from the closing line of the album: "I don't believe you, you've got the whole damn thing all wrong. He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday."

Artist:    Allman Brothers Band
Title:    Done Somebody Wrong
Source:    LP: At Fillmore East
Writer(s):    Kirkland/James
Label:    Mercury (original label: Capricorn)
Year:    1971
    As a general rule, live albums by rock bands are made up mostly of tunes that the group had previously released on studio albums. The Allman Brothers Band, however, took a different path for their 1971 double LP At Fillmore East. Of the seven tracks spread across four album sides, only the last two had previously appeared on the band's two studio efforts. The first four tunes, in fact, were blues covers such as Done Somebody Wrong, a tune generally attributed to Elmore James, who recorded the song in 1960. James, however, had actually rearranged a song that Eddie Kirkland had released in 1959 called I Must Have Done Somebody Wrong. Kirkland had given James permission to record the song, but only if Kirkland was credited as the songwriter, however James's name appeared on the 1960 single as the sole songwriter. When the Allman Brothers Band performed the song at the Fillmore East they introduced it as "an old Elmore James" tune.

Artist:      Blues Image
Title:     Pay My Dues
Source:      CD: Open
Writer(s):    Blues Image
Label:     Sundazed (original label: Atco)
Year:     1970
     When I first heard Blues Image's Ride Captain Ride on the radio I wasn't all that impressed with it. Then the local club I hung out at got it on the jukebox and people started playing the B side, a song called Pay My Dues. Then I went out and bought the album, Open. Yes, Pay My Dues is that good. As it turns out, so is the rest of the album. Even Ride Captain Ride sounds better now. Shows the latent power of a B side, doesn't it?

Artist:    Harvey Mandel
Title:    Wade In The Water
Source:    LP: Cristo Redentor
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:    Philips
Year:    1968
    Harvey Mandel first came to national attention as the guitarist on Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band, one of the first blues albums to be also targeted to rock listeners. One of the standout tracks on the album was Christo Redemptor, which has come to be considered Musselwhite's signature song. Not long after the album was released, Mandel moved to San Francisco, performing regularly at the Matrix club and often jamming with fellow guitarists Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia. A chance meeting with local disc jockey Abe "Voco" Kesh led to Mandel's first solo LP, the instrumental Cristo Redentor, released in 1968. The traditional African song Wade In The Water (attributed on the label to James Alexander and Sam Cooke) is often cited as the album's most outstanding track, and led to Mandel being invited to replace Henry Vestine in Canned Heat the following year. 

Artist:    Ainsley Dunbar Retaliation
Title:    Sage Of Sydney Street
Source:    LP: The Ainsley Dunbar Retaliation
Writer(s):    Ainsley Dunbar
Label:    Blue Thumb
Year:    1968
    Drummer Ainsley Dunbar is probably best known for being an integral part of several successful bands, including Journey, Jefferson Starship, Whitesnake and the Mothers Of Invention. His career didn't have such an illustrious start, however. In fact, he was actually fired from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in 1967 and replaced by Mick Fleetwood. After sitting in on a few early singles by the Jeff Beck Group, Dunbar decided to get even with Mayall by forming the Ainsley Dunbar Retaliation. Dunbar recruited multi-instrumentalist Victor Brox, cited by both Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner as their favorite white blues singer, to be the band's lead vocalist. He filled out the rest of the group with lead guitarist John Morshead and bassist Alex Dmochowski, whose playing dominates the instrumental Sage Of Sydney Street.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Morning Will Come
Source:    CD: The Best Of Spirit (originally released on LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus)
Writer(s):    Randy California
Label:    Epic
Year:    1970
    When Lou Adler switched distribution of Ode Records from Columbia to A&M, part of the deal was to sell Spirit's recordings to Columbia's parent company, CBS. CBS then assigned the band to its Epic label, while strongly hinting that if the next album didn't show an improvement in sales over their previous efforts their contract would be terminated. Spirit responded with the 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, widely regarded as their best album. One of the better known songs from Sardonicus is Morning Will Come, a Randy California tune with a strong R&B flavor (including a horn section). Initial sales of the album, however, were not that good, resulting in lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes leaving Spirit to form Jo Jo Gunne the following year.